


Command me to be well

by capsiclemycaptain, Menatiera



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Bucky is not entirely human either, M/M, Necromancer Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers is an angry chihuahua, Therapist Bucky Barnes, Therapy, Zombies, anger management issues, bucky lost his arm and now he is loosing his temper too, copious amounts of dead things crawling out from the grave and nobody giving a single damn, established existence of magic, jokes abour missing arms, jokes about dead things, srly so many dead things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 18:48:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12538768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capsiclemycaptain/pseuds/capsiclemycaptain, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menatiera/pseuds/Menatiera
Summary: Prompt: "Necromancer Steve is going to anger management because every time he gets pissed off dead people start crawling out of the ground."That's it, that's the story. A creepy tale involving zombies, therapy, and - yes, you guessed it right - love. Beware of treating death as a joke. (But hey, for a necromancer...)Artwork is by capsiclemycaptain (ao3) / Brooklyn_bisexual (tumblr).





	Command me to be well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jinlinli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlinli/gifts).



> The awesome prompt belongs to [Jinlinli](http://jinlinli.tumblr.com/). I just played with it.
> 
> The title comes from Hozier's Take me to church, despite I listened Skillet's Rise (and other angry/emo kinda stuff for Steve's headspace) through writing this fic.
> 
> [Brooklyn-bisexual](http://brooklyn-bisexual.tumblr.com/post/166889414332/second-submission-for-the-stuckyscarybang-for-the) made an AMAZING artwork for this same prompt, check out her tumblr too.
> 
> And as per usual nowadays, I owe endless thanks and probably some gratitude gifts to [sapphirae_escapist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphirae_escapist) (known as [cpt-winniethepooh](http://cpt-winniethepooh.tumblr.com/) on tumblr) for her truly amazing patience for my grammatical errors and for her being the #1 fan of my writing. You are an endless source of encouragement and inspiration, darling!

**Command me to be well**

 [](https://imgur.com/5HyDT8T)

Steve's shoulders were raised, his arms crossed in front of him, and despite his frail form and tiny appearance, he seemed like he was ready to kill someone. Or raise hell on someone. Given his situation, the latter seemed a more likely scenario.

“This is pointless,” he declared.

“Agreed,” James Barnes, call-me-just-Bucky, answered without hesitation. He lounged in an armchair, his head and his legs thrown over the armrests, and he looked at his patient from upside down. He kept throwing a little stressball up rhythmically.

Steve stared at him. "What?” As expected, the easy win shook his fake calm. “You're the therapist, shouldn't you insist on the good effect or something?”

“'M not your babysitter,” Barnes shrugged. “You're a freakin’ powerful necromancer, what do they expect from me?” He threw the ball up again, then caught it with his only hand. He was an amputee, but Steve had no idea what happened to Barnes exactly. “You'll probably kill yourself soon with your magic anyway,” he added indifferently.

“Wow, thanks for the optimism.”

“Well, it's realistic, given your poor control.”

There was a brief pause. Steve wanted to insist, he wanted to really badly. But he wasn't a liar. And the fact that he resurrected a whole cemetery _twice_ just in a weekend before he was sentenced to these sessions spoke louder than any words, really. “But,” Bucky continued not so long later, “we're both here and none of us have any other choice than enduring these sessions. We have to enjoy each other's company. So what do you say, we could give it a try, eh?”

Steve felt like someone was pulling on his teeth as he grimly replied, “Yeah, okay.”

James sat up abruptly. “Wait, that's all? Huh. That was waaay too easy. I'm sure you're just saying it without meaning, y'know.”

Steve gritted his teeth. “You say I'm a liar? That's what you mean?!” His voice rose up a bit and he felt bubbles forming in his stomach.

“Maybe. Or maybe you just say that to avoid direct confrontation because you're a cowar-”

Bucky couldn't even finish the incriminating word when Steve jumped to his feet, fists clenched, jaws tightly squared. He felt the familiar sensation of _boiling_ , crawling in his guts, making his head light and just a little bit dizzy. He tried to calm down, to stop it from happening - in a rational way, he knew it's an inappropriate answer even though Bucky’s challenge was entirely unfair. Unfortunately, his gut reaction could never be regulated by rational thoughts and his emotions were hardly held back by- well, literally anything.

And his emotions were clearly strongly tied to his powers. He felt one soft, cold wave cutting through the air like a knife: not at all visible, still completely palpable.

As Steve struggled for control there was a loud thump on the window glass: a pigeon flew directly into it and tried to smash it with its head. When that effort failed, it turned back, flew a few feet away, then tried again.

Its neck was already broken, its feathers bloody. Bucky frowned. Steve still stood stiff and offended. “Apologize to me! I'm not a coward!” he demanded.

“Is that all?” Bucky didn't seem afraid at all even though Steve was directly staring at him with a death glare. He looked... disappointed, instead, and something strange gleamed  in his eyes. Steve suddenly realized that he could almost, _almost_ sense him with his magic. He never ever sensed a living person before… though it might just have been in Steve’s imagination. “Only one zombie pigeon? Come ooon! They said you were powerful.”

Steve resisted the urge to punch Bucky in the face, but barely . A second bird, however, joined the first's attempt to break into the office. And then a third, and then another, and... It took less than three minutes and the dead birds blocked most of the light from the office, all of them besieging the window in a united effort to get in.

Bucky still didn't seem to mind. He whistled approvingly. “Now that's something. I'm impressed,” he smiled at Steve. “Now that we know what we're dealing with, can you please put them back into their place so we can really start working?”

Steve struggled to stay at least partially in control as the 180 turns of the conversations threw him off his feet. “Uh…” He felt and probably looked like a fool as he stoodin the middle of the office with his mouth hanging open. Bucky either didn’t notice (unlikely), or didn’t care (what the _hell?!_ ).

“It seems a lot. How many dead birds were laying around nearby, what do you think?”

Steve answered before he could think about it.“Two hundred and sixty-seven.”

Bucky, for the first time during their meeting, seemed incredulous. “Can't be that much!” he stared at Steve. “How big is your power range?”

Steve rubbed the nape of his neck and didn't dare to look back. “Uh. I caught myself pretty early on. So. It's just the City, this time.”

“Just.the.City.” Bucky's gaze went blank and emotionless. “You... resurrected every dead bird laying around _in the entire goddamned Manhattan_. In an area of roughly 23 square miles.”

“Of course not! Just the fresh ones. Deceased no more than two days ago,” Steve protested, already nauseous thanks to the stare. His powers freaked people out often. Necromancy was not meant to be normal for mere humans. Most of the time, Steve was cool with it - he couldn’t do anything against it, so he had to be.

Still, it hurt, especially from a therapist on their first meeting (if you didn’t count their brief introduction earlier). Here would come the part where he refused to work with Steve, when he’d make it clear that he was a freak, that it would be too much of a burden…

“Man, you’re incredible, that's the most fucking _awesome_ thing I've ever seen!”

It took a moment to actually comprehend the words, and then… a relieved grin appeared on Steve’s face and he sat back to the armchair in an almost collapse. He sighed, ready to release his grip on the undead, and Bucky raised his hand. “If I may, you really should guide them back to the place you picked them up from or something,” he said with a little smirk. “I’d hate to do all the awful paperwork after two hundred dead birds fell from the sky around the Home and, dunno, hit everyone near the building on the head.”

Steve nodded and followed the advice. He wasn’t fond of paperwork either.

“You really do have a temper,” Bucky commented lightly after the birds were gone.

“It's just the way I am,” Steve replied defensively again, hunched in on himself and crossed his arms in front of him.

“Well, it can be changed. I used to be hotheaded just like you.”

Steve looked at him. On one hand, James seemed like the most chillout guy he’d ever met, nothing suggested he’d ever had problems with his temper. On the other hand, Steve knew that he must have overcome something as it was among the requirements of joining the Stark  Home For Recovering Supernaturals staff. Its owner, billionaire and former weapon inventor Anthony Stark, insisted on it, saying personal experience made the therapist better at relating and therefore more successful.

“What happened?”

Bucky shrugged and made a vague gesture toward his missing arm. “Life taught me some lessons. I'm fairly positive I can teach you some as well without you losing a limb,” Bucky's grin was sometimes soothing, but at this point, it was closer to the maniac side of the spectrum. Somehow it was even more reassuring, and Steve swallowed back a laugh despite the fact that Bucky wasn't sharing the whole truth, and they both knew that.

“Okay, Mr. Know-It-All, and how do you plan to do that?”

“I already have some homework in mind for you.”

And that was how it all began.

*

Anger management was a bitch.

His therapist, however, was not.

*

Steve was quite sure he'd never be able to get a hold on his temper. No matter how much homework Bucky assigned to him or how much they managed to practice together, Steve's first and initial gut reaction remained the same: he snapped and raised the dead.

The sessions did help a bit, though.

First week's assignment was to keep an eye on his own mood and to make a journal about each and every time he was feeling angry, sad, afraid or in any way distressed. A stupid task, but one he did anyway. (Bucky’s satisfied Chesire cat smilemade it worthwhile - a sight that had Steve suddenly feeling butterflies in his stomach.)

Then he had to work further with his notes. Assessing the origins of the feelings, the autonomic physical responses to his emotions, his actual reactions to various situations and so forth and on.

He never consciously realized before that he had so strong feelings toward his medication, for example, and that two-thirds of his outbursts were at the afternoon hours, probably because by that time he got physically or emotionally exhausted.

(“This is ridiculous,” Steve insisted when Bucky first suggested this conclusion. “I'm never tired!” Bucky sighed and they did the homework all over again, but this time focusing on signs of fatigue. After Bucky explained precisely what to look for, Steve couldn't fit all of his weekly observations on one page in his notebook despite his tiny-lettered, neat handwriting.)

If Steve thought altering his mood would be easy after these, he got disappointed soon enough.

Bucky stayed true to his word and while they were working on Steve's self-awareness with tons of sharing and talking, he also started to teach him a few techniques. Most of them were not new to Steve as he’d heard about them or even tried them before, but without notable results.

“For fuck's sake, Bucky!” Steve wasn't even sure when he actually started calling his therapist by his nickname. “I'm a _necromancer_. Group therapy is not something that could cure me out of this!” he snapped after Bucky suggested a self-help group one of his friends here at the Home mediated.

Bucky stared at him incredulously. “What the hell are you talking about? Why would you need to be cured of anything?”

“Because I can't keep resurrecting things all the time!”

“Dude. That's what self-control’s for,” Bucky sighed without even raising his head from the armrest of his favorite chair. “It's like if you'd want to cure your eye color? You can’t wish away the fact that you were born with special powers.”

At those words Steve’s power darted through the room, and this time pointed at Bucky like an arrow. As always, Steve sensed the response from his therapist's general direction, the familiar-yet-devastatingly-alien _feeling_ which he still wasn't able to pinpoint. It was like a word hanging on the tip of his tongue but still just out of reach.

“You have any idea what this feels like?” Steve's voice rose up and he was almost shouting. “This darkness in my soul? The knowledge that I'm cursed forever?”

Bucky banged his head on the pillows for a few times. It was not the first, and most certainly not the last time they discussed this, arguing whether his ability was either a gift or a curse for Steve. “Kid, it's just necromancy, not the end of the world,” he sighed. “You'll learn to keep your shit together and that's it.”

Steve's breaths came out heavy and he curled and flexed his fingers rhythmically like Bucky suggested him to do so when in distress. “But it's... it's not like eye color, Bucky!” he said finally. “I can feel them all the time. Every fucking minute. When I drift off to sleep I swear I can feel Death's presence. If I close my eyes all I see are corpses.”

Steve swallowed hard. Bucky sat up. “Stop moping!” he ordered fiercely. How he could go from completely relaxed to steel-hard in milliseconds amazed Steve since the very first time it happened. “You see the dead? Big deal! So do I, pal, and guess what, _I have killed all of mine_. You're gonna have to learn to live with it or you'll go nuts, and as your therapist, I forbid you the latter. It's nothing to be upset about. It's just your life. Understood?”

Steve resisted to urge to salute and shout 'sir yes sir' if not for anything else than to mock Bucky; but instead he nodded and briefly wondered since when did he respected him this much. “If you show me how.”

Bucky's sudden smile was wide and warm like the touch of the spring Sun on budding branches after a long winter. And it caused unexpected twists in Steve’s stomach. “Sure thing, pal.”

*

“Have you tried yoga?”" Bucky asked once. Steve glared at him so hard that if he’d been a pyrokinetic Bucky would’ve been on fire already. Thankfully that was just wishful thinking because Bucky looked back with his usual serenity and without a trace of flames.

“I will not do yoga,” Steve answered as grimly as possible.

“Why not? It's a great form of excercise.”

“Is this a test again? Try to see if I use what I've learned so far?”

Bucky seemed surprised by that. “Now I'm really curious what you have against yoga,” he declared.

“Don't be that person or I'll have to punch you in the face several times, therapist or not,” Steve warned, already on the edge of an outburst. “Thanks to modern medicine I'm relatively okay now but I had… conditions all my life. Do you know what it feels like when you tell someone about your more or less chronic pains and they recommend you do yoga?” he gesticulated wildly and felt the corpses in the nearest morgue opening their eyes. He swallowed hard but couldn't stop himself at this point. “It sucks! They say it's like a magical miracle cure to everything! Like it doesn’t matter if you are in pain or not, yoga will help. Yoga will solve all your problems, do your taxes for you and even call your awful uncle every once in a while, because it knows you despise having to talk to him. Yoga is like a fucking winning prize in life's lottery. Yoga knows best. Yoga cares. Yoga! _I HATE YOGA!”_ he roared at the end, and stopped pacing up and down, something he apparently did during his little speech, and he stomped his foot to the carpet. With the level of his voice his power rose as well, and the eruption felt like liquid fire in his throat, burning in both a physical and metaphysical way.

“Wow. Remember to breathe." Even Bucky seemed a bit stunned. “Okay, I won't recommend yoga again.”

“Fucking thank you,” Steve grumbled and struggled to calm down enough for sending back whatever the hell he raised this time.

“Maybe something else as a workout? Like swimming or dancing?”

Steve screamed so loud that all the birds flew away from the trees nearby.

But Bucky laughed, soft and easy, more of a titter than an actual crack-up, and somehow it made everything all right.

*

“How's your punishment going?” his colleague Natasha asked in their day off. As Stark employees - Steve a necromancer of course, and Nat as a psychic with an additional special connection and control over spiders - of the Supernatural department of the Industries, most of the time they were too busy to have vacation, but sometimes even they needed to have a break. Steve was sitting with his sketchbook in his lap and tried his best to capture the motion of some kids playing with a football nearby.

“"It's okay.”

Nat's eyebrows arched high at this. “What...?”

“What?”

“You were so angry when the jury said you have to attend anger management therapy that literally half a zoo worth of dead animals swarmed the courtroom. Which, by the way, just made everything worse to you and doubled the time. And now you say it's okay?”

Steve shrugged but he avoided eye contact. “It's just not as bad as I expected.”

Natasha assessed him for a moment, and maybe she saw something in Steve's eyes or in his defensive posture because she sat down as close as possible and snatched the sketchbook away. “All right. Tell me. I need to know everything. Male or female?”

Steve sighed. “I have no idea what are you talking about,” he grumbled, “but my therapist's name is Bucky. He's...” And so Steve started to spill and Natasha listened with curious eyes and a bright smile.

*

_Steve is furious, he’s on his feet, and he struggles to catch his breath._

_In front of him Bucky slowly stands up, never afraid of Steve’s power that constantly tries to break out of this small and fragile vessel, and he makes sure that the rise and fall of his shoulders are absolutely visible while he breathes, and Steve stares at Bucky's chest that is somehow not covered with any clothes and - wow, those muscles! - does his best to mimic the easy rhythm like they did before. And he feels the blush on his cheeks, the warmth of it moving from his face to his neck and then down, fill in his chest as he reaches out to touch the clean skin, his blood rushing and his vision blurring, and the whole world becomes so hot it's almost painful yet it's so, so desirable..._

Steve jerked awake with a dry mouth and a full-on erection and he cursed under his breath as he jerked off thinking about observant grey eyes and about how very talented that mouth would be on his skin.

It occurred to him only hours later that despite the raw and strong emotions he had experienced both in his sleep and afterwards, not a single spike of his necromancy had appeared and not even a fly had been resurrected that night.

He tried to ignore it as long as possible, but after some fruitless attempts to go on with his daily tasks, he had to admit defeat. He was so disoriented he walked not only into a doorframe but straight into a wall as well. In his own apartment. Because he was busy thinking about how much he wished to be in his next therapy session.

This was... definitely a problem. Either because he became so dependent on the therapy, or… No, definitely that and that exclusively was the problem, had to be, no other options were available. It wasn't about Bucky. Not at all. Bucky was just... kind and generous and relaxed and wise and... a good therapist. Yeah. Of course. So. More frequent therapy had to be a good idea, right? Coincidentally Steve could see Bucky more often. For more advice, of course, and NOT because he missed seeing him and missed watching those kissable lips forming words and…

The pencil broke in Steve's hand he groaned and went to take a shower. It was about needing more therapy. _Exclusively_ therapy and nothing more.

He sent back the neighbor's dog's corpse to its grave before anyone noticed it went for a walk.

*

Field trip. That's what Bucky called this. Steve imagined a walk in Central Park, or some trip to the woods, tops, not a freaking helicopter waiting for them on the rooftop and an actual fly over the ocean.

Bucky piloted the aircraft and it was only the two of them as far as the eye could see. No other human being, no other sign of life, just the endless blue of the ocean a few hundred feet below and the huge waves of the water caused by the airscrew. The soundproofing of the copter and the earpiece made the noise of the engines dull and quiet but their words clear.

“Why are we even here?” Steve asked, pressing his sweating palm harder to the handrail. His knuckles were white. He wasn't a fan of heights, and sitting in a tin can above the ocean seemed like pushing their luck a bit too far. The thought of crashing into the water made him nauseous.

“Remember how I always say you need to find a safe outlet of your anger?”

“Yeah, and you remember when I told you that hitting a pillow or something like that doesn't really help since it's purely physical and doesn't help with my magical blows?” Steve forced his eyes open and stared at Bucky.

“Precisely,” Bucky looked at Steve with gentle eyes (or was _that_ just wishful thinking?) and smiled. They really tried that one. “So I thought of something better. This is your chance, Steve. No land, no graves, no humans to be worried for, and no dead bodies, just the ocean and us.”

Bucky guided the helicopter with ease that spoke of considerable practice. They hovered in place while they were talking, for which Steve was once ungrateful because he had no excuse to concentrate on the outside world, but suddenly he didn't want to meet Bucky's eyes either. He stared at his hands.

“That's why you brought me here? You want me to be angry?”

“Well, at least you'll let out some steam, right?”

Steve willed himself to look up at him again. “You said no living nearby, but that's not true.”

“You sense only the dead, you told me so, so don't bullshit me, Stevie.” Steve's breath got lost somewhere in his chest and he had to cough a few times to recover.

Stevie? That was... nice, actually. He never had a nickname. His mother didn't believe in nicknames ( _'you should be proud of your father's name'_ , she’d always said), and he never had friends who were good with endearments, either. He was always called simply Steve or Rogers, or, when he was really into annoying them, Captain for his bossy behavior.

Steve cleared his throat. “No bullshitting,” he promised sincerely, trying to sound casual. “But we are here. _You_ are here. What if I hurt you somehow?”

“Aw, don't worry, this bird is practically flying itself, you won't fall into the ocean,” Bucky teased, but sobered quickly. “I'm not dead, so I'll be fine.”

Technically that was true. Steve still didn't tell him anything about that strange sensation he always felt when his necromancy was aimed toward Bucky.

“This is a bad idea,” he protested.

“Come on, Steve, let's not waste Stark's money for nothing. Just try it out.”

Steve smiled at that. As far as he knew - not like he researched it or anything, why would’ve he done that? - James Barnes and Tony Stark were good friends. (The press sometimes assumed that they might be a couple and - well, that hurt, but thankfully there were no compromising photos so it remained only a rumor, purely speculation.)

“Still there's one tiny-teeny problem. Right now I don't feel that particularly angry,” he wasn't gonna admit that he was barely keeping his shit together because he was so scared. Using his necromancy out of fear differed from his angry outbursts.

Bucky grinned. “Okay, this calls for drastic measures. Do yoga!” he yelled, and laughed, and Steve knew under any other circumstances he'd be so pissed, but right now all he was able was to laugh with Bucky.

“You are terrible!” he wheezed, already out of air. His lungs worked way better than they did in his childhood, but not nearly good enough compared to a healthy adult's, and laughter still knocked Steve breathless more often than not. (Especially when Bucky was around.)

“Sorry not sorry. Did I ever recommend you to burn incense and scented candles? Last time I checked, that artisan gift shop on the first floor had great pumpkin spice cinnamon ones stocked for fall. They really are helpful.”

“Bucky, I'm still a necromancer and candles are still not blocking my powers,” but Steve was still giggling. Bucky glanced at the control panels.

And then he let go of the joystick and sat back.

“What the hell!” Steve yelled and reached out in haste to grab at it but his seatbelt stopped him mid-motion and he couldn't reach far enough. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Bucky's smile was full of mischief. “Tell me about the presence of Death  you feel every night around you.”

“This is not the right time... Bucky, dammit, get that fucking thing!”

“Relax, Steve.”

“DON'T FUCKING TELL ME TO RELAX! You wanna kill us?!” Steve was definitely close to panic, and panic always made him even more furious, because he hated feeling any kind of fear, not to mention lack of control. Maybe because of his crappy childhood full of near-death experiences, but Steve didn't hate anything more viciously than being out of control. Until that point Bucky almost made him forget about his horror of heights simply because being next to Bucky made him feel safe, but now it hit him harder than ever. Right then- _it was a threat_ -, in the face of this idiot's irresponsibility - _vulnerability_ -, it hit him full force again - _protect at all cost_ -, and feeling scared always made Steve furious - _it wasn’t safe it' wasn’t safe_ \- because he hated that so much - _come and help come and help_ -, and...

There was no one around.

He sucked on his breath, and - almost unconsciously - tried to dig deeper.

It felt like anxiety, except it wasn't stress that grew inside him now, but potential. His gift that kept him alive so far - at least Natasha phrased like that most of the time - was viciously trying to find a way to do its job. His necromancy almost felt sentient now, like some sort of semi-intelligent being inside him. It wanted - it _needed_ . Bodies, no matter how old they were. Targets, to fill. It needed the release from Steve, because a mere mortal body wasn’t able to withhold all this power, it just wasn’t feasible... So it reached, and reached, and reached, but what he found was not nearly enough and not nearly familiar enough. Bones at the ground of the ocean, the half-eaten remains of a whale nearby, an abandoned shipwreck's century-old crewmembers... _More_ . The power shrieked inside. Steve needed more. His _necromancy_ needed more.

The line between the two got too blurred to tell the difference anymore.

Steve didn't notice that he sobbed out and his muscles trembled with the effort to satisfy his need. He reached further, he had to find something - bodies, more bodies - more… He was so focused on his internal radar of the dead that he lost connection almost completely to his other senses.

At least he thought so.

When Bucky touched his arm, _that_ felt almost electrifying, his focus snapped back immediately, and his power did the same too.

He felt all of his necromancy dancing in the air of the helicopter, licking and sieging all the surfaces, and then it was all focused on Bucky. And the something in Bucky had no other choice than to respond. The power called it, soft and commanding, sweet and pretentious, delicate and strong at the same time. Steve saw it behind closed eyelids, like grey fume evaporating from his skin, twisting tentacles around Bucky. The human seemed fragile and helpless against it. But the thing inside... that was not helpless nor fragile. It was red as flames and blue as ice and black as the night itself. It tore chains away and broke through walls and filled Bucky's vessel up just like necromancy filled Steve's.

At first it seemed like an even match, a fight for dominance none of them could ever win. The necromancy let go of the faraway shipwreck's once crew then the bones and remnants of fish and whale to focus solely to this task. It was like a carefully coreographed dance, one that held all the grace of the harmonic movements and the bizarre beauty of a fight. It was not physical, but that didn't make it any less real, the back and forth of strikes interweaved like silk thread. The grey power looped around the unholy figure like knitwork, slowly but steadily, faster than the other was able to burn and freeze the binding, until it had no other choice than to stop struggling and bow down.

Steve was not sure how long it took, but when it happened, he was finally able to open his eyes. He was on the floor - he had no recollection of unclasping his seatbelt or falling off his seat -, sweating, nauseous, but his muscles were finally able to relax. Bucky was kneeling over him.

Bucky, with two arms.

Steve couldn't help but stare.

Bucky seemed... almost normal. His eyes seemed a bit glossy and his skin sweaty - mostly on his forehead - glittering by the faint sunlight. His lips were trembling a bit, and he had bags under his eyes like these last moments were just as exhausting as a bunch of sleepless nights.

“You all right?” Bucky’s voice came out rough, like he’d been screaming for a long time.

But the biggest difference was the left arm. It was... entirely... black. At first it seemed solid,  shaped like a perfectly normal limb, but after a few seconds, it was obvious that it wasn't that. The blackness went far deeper than it should've, it wasn’t  just the absence of light but the complete opposite; it almost radiated the darkness, and it looked like it had a thin smoke layer on it, always moving but never too evidently.

Steve felt dizzy when he saw it out of the corner of his eyes.

“I'm...” Steve took his time to examine his state before he answered. The magic in his chest purred with satisfaction, and it tied Steve and Bucky together firmly. “I'm okay,” he said finally. He was still a bit nauseous, and his lungs hurt from his previous panic, but at the same time he felt more peaceful than ever, now that the necromancy's hunger was well fed. Actually, he never sensed it to be so satisfied before, not even after reanimating whole cemeteries.

Bucky's smile was far from honest, and he didn't move just stayed on his knees next to and leaning over Steve. They shared the relative silence for a minute.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” Steve asked finally.

Bucky's lips faint into a thin, unhappy line, but he answered anyway. “Go on.”

“I don't wanna sound paranoid, but, Bucky, who’s driving this chopper?”

That almost made him laugh, and part of the tension sweeped out of Bucky's posture. “The system is quite intelligent, it can handle it alone,” he shrugged.

“I'd be more calm if you'd pilot, y'know,” Steve tried to sound casual, and he was surprised to found it pretty easy. He was safe. Nothing to worry about. The power inside was so relaxed...

“Well, you have to let me go first,” Bucky pressed his lips into a thin line again and looked at him expectantly as Steve gazed back blankly. “You... tied... me,” Bucky struggled with the words, probably because he didn't really want to admit to them.

“You?” Steve was more confused than ever. “My control is exclusively for dead things, Bucky, and to my knowledge you’re alive.”

“I am,” he reassured quickly, “but this inside me? Not so much,” he admitted after a pause.

Steve eyed Bucky's left arm. Bucky lifted it and moved his fingers, and seeing them in the direct sunlight was even more disorienting than in the shadows.

“What the hell?” was the only thing Steve was able to mutter.

“Kind of that,” Bucky's smile became more soft and more sad, and at that moment realization hit Steve.

He didn't know where it came from or why he was so sure but he was. “It's a demon, isn't it?”

Demons were... rare. Steve’d never met one before. They were also dangerous and destructive, and having them in the mortal realm usually meant trouble and chaos. “How?”

“Long story,” Bucky deflected. “If you let us go, I can guide this copter back,” he offered instead.

Steve wanted to insist, he wanted to warn him about danger and to protect himself and Bucky from whatever threat a demon meant, but instead he bit his lips and stayed mute. He closed his eyes and the mental image appeared in front of him, a dark and powerful spirit in Bucky, bound by Steve's magic. It was clear that the demon had fought against the restrains, but hadn’t had enough strength to ever break out of them without help, and so it stopped struggling against the binding and it clearly was ready to bid its time with unnatural patience.

Steve looked up again. “Is it safe?”" he asked at last.

Bucky considered that for a moment. “As safe as it ever was.”

Steve nodded, slowly, but did not release his grip immediately. He closed his eyes to see the mental image again, and this time he was leaning closer to the demon. Magic hummed contently in his mind, and even as his rational thoughts whispered about evil spirits and danger, his instincts shushed them effectively. There was nothing to fear here - Steve was perfectly in control of the situation, and the realization made him smile a bit.

 _‘You are mine_ ,’ he thought, and it reached the demon. He more felt than saw that Bucky shifted his weight, but in his mind both him and the creature remained still.

 _‘At this moment_ ,’ it finally thought back.

_‘Are you threatening me?’_

_‘Do you allow me to threaten you?’_

Steve hummed. ‘ _I actually like you.’_

The demon seemed surprised at that, but Steve didn't let it answer. ‘ _When I release you, I want you to go back where you came from. I don't want you to make the life of your vessel harder more than earlier. You'll do your thing exactly as you did before I bound you, with only one exception. Will you obey me?’_

The grey tentacles of his power tightened around the figure: just a reminder. The fire-filled eyes of the demon looked back at Steve without any hint of emotion.

_‘What is the exception?’_

_‘You'll come and serve me when I'll be in need. I allow you to ignore my power every other time, but when I’ll reach especially for you, you'll answer my call. That is my command for you.’_

It was a rule with power: you had to use it, otherwise it always threatened to consume you. Steve usually gave himself the leeway to only command the dead back to their graves and that was it, he didn’t ask for anything more. But after the efforts of this match, Steve didn’t want to take any risk, he had to cement the power dynamics.

And anyway, better have an advantage over a demon now than to be overpowered later because you were generous. Steve could solve the problem of binding Bucky - which was Totally Not Okay - when he was sure that neither the creature of chaos nor his own necromancy could cause trouble.

The demon, apparently, had its doubts.

_‘Will you be able to control yourself enough to give me this advantage, Necromancer?’_

Steve smiled. _‘Trust my power, Demon.’_

_‘I have no other choice. Be wise, Necromancer. I'll serve if I must, but I won't ever be an ally of yours.’_

_‘Understood.’_

Steve slowly and cautiously wrapped his necromancy back in its place, releasing Bucky and his demon. Whether because of the direct orders earlier or because Bucky had a firm grip on his companion there was no incident and no wreaking havoc after the grey fume unleashed the spirit. Steve did his best to regain the full capacity of his physical senses instead of the magical one, so he didn't examine the procedure that carefully.

They sat in silence on their flight back to the Home with Steve dozing on and off the whole time after such a power demonstration.

*

As soon as they landed, Bucky jumped out of the helicopter and busied himself around the vehicle. Steve was too exhausted - or too relaxed - to stay on his heels and follow around, so he promptly sat down on the concrete of the roof, blinking owlishly.

“I think you have some explanations to do,” he called out.

“I think not,” Bucky shrugged and continued to do whatever the hell needed to be done with a freshly used helicopter. Steve had his suspicions about how none of this business was strictly necessary maintenance but a thinly veiled attempt at avoidance.

“Bucky, that was a literal, actual, out of hell demon. In you,” Steve stressed and suddenly he felt much less sleepy.

“No shit, Sherlock. Though I'd appreciate if you didn’t shout it from the rooftop.”

He snickered at that, but Bucky didn't even smile. “They don't know?”

“Some are aware, some are not, and I'd like to keep the privilege of deciding who should fall to either category.”

Bucky was far from the relaxed self he presented during their therapy sessions. He was grumpy and deeply shaken by the experience. Steve couldn't exactly blame the guy: he himself was so much worse after his first necromancy outburst. In excuse of his behaviour, he had been around seven years old, so. That was a bit different.

“Let me guess, you never planned to tell me,” his easy and relaxed state of mind after the experience faded quickly in the face of Bucky's mood, and the words came out harsh and bitter. Bucky spun on his heels.

“I'm your therapist and you are my patient, it's not really allowed that I spill my guts to you, okay? I should be guiding you, not complaining to you,” and for the first time, Bucky was the one who sounded angry and Steve was the one who was... well, not entirely calm, but closer to calm than to an explosion. (In his case that still was a huge progress.) Steve kinda liked the role reversal on a theoretical level, but in practice he felt bad for putting Bucky in this situation.

Though it wasn’t like this little 'field trip' was his idea in the first place, or that he bound a resident demon intentionally. But still. He couldn't help the way he was feeling.

“You promised me that you’d tell it,” he reminded Bucky.

“I said I'll guide the chopper back, not that I'll tell you anything.”

Shit. Now that Steve thought about it he realized that it was true. He assumed - wrongly, as it seemed - that coming back would entail an explanation.

Any other time, Steve would have demanded answers. But he was exhausted in a good way. It must have been the same feeling people got after a good workout, or at least Steve imagined. So he just stood up and stretched. His muscles were a bit sore, but overall he felt... good. No threatening cough, no rattle in his lungs, no ill throb of his heart, no ache from his bad spine for some precious moments.

“Okay,” he smiled at Bucky, and his surrender obviously threw him off-balance, “next time as usual?”

“Ehm, sure.”

Steve felt Bucky's gaze on his back as he walked away, and the first thing he did as he was out of Bucky's scope was to look for something small to reanimate.

The baby rat’s fresh carcass seemed to be perfect for the job. He sent it to hide in Bucky's office.

*

“Why doesn't he trust me?” Steve whined the next time he met Sam.

“Buddy. You just told me about his biggest secret, so I guess some of his fears are pretty valid,” they both knew Steve could (and would) tell Sam everything, and it would still remain a secret that Sam’d take with himself to the grave, so it wasn't particularly insulting either way. “And based on what you told me, it's not about trust, more about professionalism, which is, by the way, should be highly appreciated if you ask me.”

“I don't want him to be professional...”

“But you have to respect his boundaries,” Sam warned again.

“UUUUGH, I knooow,” Steve wailed, “but can you even _believe_ how great he is? I mean, this whole demon thing is just adds to it - don't laugh, Sam, I swear I'll bring back all your deceased pet pigeons if you don't stop -, but Bucky is the most caring person I've ever met.”

“Yes, because he's your therapist. It's his job to make sure you feel that he cares. It doesn't have to mean that he actually...”

“He's not like this with others!”

This actually stopped Sam for a few seconds and he started eyeing Steve suspiciously. “And exactly how do you have this information?”

Steve's ears turned to light pink. “Ehm... I may... have resurrected a rat to spy on him?”

Sam buried his face in his palms. “Dude, I wanna say you need a therapist, but maybe you need the exact opposite of that.”

“You are not helping, Sam,” Steve scowled, “and he said I'm the cutest thing he ever saw when I'm in angry chihuahua mode!”

Sam groaned loudly. “Okay, from now on, you go with this shit to Natasha because I don't want to hear about it. Like, ever. I'm not curious about your weird confessions of love, okay?”

Steve's eyes lit up. “You think it's love?”

“Get out!”

*

After the incident, Bucky’s aim was clearly going  back to normal, and he  tried to stay as professional as possible. The problem, of course, was that  Steve had zero intentions of doing the same. Bucky seemed to be doing okay, and neither him nor Steve felt anything that suggested Steve had control over _Bucky_ , but Steve would be more glad if he had more proof of that. The chance that he could control a demon if it was causing trouble was good, but binding his friend and therapist was really not. So Steve was ready to push the matter a bit until they could talk about it properly.

“Have you considered-” Bucky started, but Steve wasn’t paying attention to therapy at all.

“What’s its name?” he interrupted.

Bucky mulled it over for a few seconds. “He calls himself the Winter Soldier,” he replied finally, after probably (correctly) realizing Steve would not let go of the topic until he got some answers. Now that they were on this new track Steve stopped fidgeting and sat up straighter. He smiled at Bucky with an enthusiasm that must have been unnerving, considering the subject. “He thinks it’s funny.”

“It kinda is,” Steve agreed, remembering the emotionless figure, its icy blue stance, the way it freezed some power around itself, and the common knowledge that associated all demonic creatures with fire. He thought about the fact that soldiers must obey orders, and how controversial this was to the very being of a demon that was supposed to be chaos itself. (Though, he had to admit, the Soldier didn’t seem like that chaotic of a type after just one encounter.) Good to know this one had some sort of humor, or at least a stab at it.

“I never knew necromancers could bind demons too,” Bucky said it out loud, meanwhile he was carefully assessing Steve’s reactions.

“Neither did I,” Steve agreed with a shrug. “Never met one before. Didn’t know it was there in you. Except…” he stopped, but upon feeling the weight of Bucky’s gaze he continued. “There’s always been some sort of… pull towards you when my necromancy was active near you. But it was faint, not strong enough to worth more attention.”

“You experienced something new and never considered investigating the cause?” Bucky sounded skeptical.

Steve, despite all his efforts, turned beef red.

“I’ve experienced all kinds of new things since I started coming here,” he coughed and felt mortified by his confession. Luckily Bucky didn’t seem to realize the true meaning behind his words.

“Do you think other necromancers would be able to do the same? To bind a demon? This demon, specifically?”

Steve hummed and had to think it through carefully.

“Not sure, but I’d say no. Not unless they were part of the summoning ritual beforehand,” he paused, then took a deep breath and  continued. “It was exhausting, it made me sleep sixteen hours straight after, so I can’t imagine less powerful necromancers being able to endure the magical stress. We usually deal with the… material part of death. The remnants, the bodies. A demon is more like a metaphysical being? No body on its own? But it truly belongs to Death’s realms in a way. I dunno, I’m not at home in demonology at all.”

“Then how were _you_ able to do it?”

Bucky didn’t appear to be scared just slightly curious. Steve shrugged noncommitaly, but Bucky had many talents and that included the skill to sit and stare and wait.

Steve was not that good when it came to patience, and though sometimes he was able to withhold his restlessness, more often than not he started talking just to avoid the drawnout silences.

“On one hand, I was born like this,” he shrugged and tried to act as if he was indifferent about the topic, but his heart drummed against his ribcage fiercely. He’d never talked about this, not even with Sam or Nat. Bucky waited. “On the other hand..." he stopped, unable to finish the sentence. “When Ma was dying…” he tried again but he really couldn’t. He suppressed a whimper.

Bucky was suddenly on his knees in front of him. “Would that help?” he gestured toward Steve's hand. “If I hold your hand while you're talking?”

Steve nodded, and Bucky interlocked their fingers, and it felt like electricity through their skin. It was like the exact opposite of a power outburst: it soothed Steve’s nerves. The barrier in his throat felt smaller.

“My Ma was really sick and I couldn't help her enough and they wouldn't let me in to see her because I might get sick myself and this doctor came with this offer that I had to accept it just wasn't another way to see my mother and he promised I'll be healthy and strong and I had to do it, Bucky,” the mass of words poured out of his mouth entangled and barely understandable. He couldn't blame Bucky who seemed lost as he tried to figure out what he was talking about.

Steve took a deep breath and tried again. (That, again, was one of Bucky's techniques: if the audience didn't get it first, then he should try to rephrase instead of getting angry at first. Outside of their sessions it hardly worked, but here it was a place for practice.)

“There was that man, doctor Erskine. He worked at the same hospital where my Ma was being treated, and he saw me there. He said it would be mutually beneficial. He needed to test his new medicine and I needed to be more healthy to get into Ma's room.”

Finally Bucky nodded, but his mouth was pressed into a thin line. “You mean you underwent experimental medical treatment?”

“I think it wasn't purely medical but mixed with magical, at least it felt like that, but yes. I signed the forms and all,” Steve shrugged but he felt shy under Bucky's intense gaze.

“Did he knew about your powers?”

“I guess? My medical records listed necromancy as a mental condition,” Steve shrugged again. Now, as an adult, he knew very well how unethical stigmatising his ability was, but he had to grow up in the face of that mentality. For a passing moment, though, Bucky seemed mad before he was able to school his expression back into careful neutrality.

“Doctor Erskine promised me that I would be big and strong. It didn't turn out as expected. I stayed as fragile as I was, but the thing inside me got bigger and stronger.”

They sat in silence for a while. “How old were you at that time?” Bucky asked finally.

“Fifteen, if I remember correctly,” Steve smiled tightly. Like one can possibly forget an encounter like this.

Bucky let his hands go and jumped to his feet to sat back on his armchair. This time he was sitting up straight: a telltale sign of his discomfort.

“You were underage and without a guardian, so legally that paper doesn't count as a valid form of consent,” he said after a brief pause.

Steve shrugged again. “Not like I can change that. He was in a hurry, I guess. He died not so much after. I accidentally brought him back once,” he admitted.

“I see,” Bucky tried to remain professional. He interlinked his fingers in front of him. “How did that felt? Did you use your… opportunity to talk with him?”

Steve shrugged. “Bringing back my dead mother was more traumatic than seeing one of the many doctors who treated me through my life,” his voice was dry. “And I don’t want to talk about _that_ now,” he added quickly, before Bucky could press the matter. Maybe at some other time, much later.

*

Steve sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Despite Sam’s concerns, who was clearly against his little spying stunt, he still had the baby rat in Bucky’s office. And he was grateful for it. Though he couldn’t see through its eyes as it ded before its eyes were open, he was able to channel some other forms of its perceptions, which went as far as to listening in on conversations.

_“I have a problem”, Bucky said._

_“Whoa, that’s a dramatic way to start. I hope you won’t explode like a space shuttle.”_

That was the voice of Tony Stark.

_“I might,” Bucky said dryly._

_“Oh, so it’s about Steve. What happened now?”_

Steve’s heart nearly jumped out from his chest. That would mean he was a regular topic between these two, right?

Wait, shouldn’t therapists be more discreet about their patients? Was it ethical to talk about them with their friends? Oh, whatever, Steve was grateful for Bucky’s slip. If it was a slip at all. Maybe it was allowed as long as they didn’t talk about the treatment. Probably.

_Bucky took a deep breath, then, “I think he’s making steady progress and so I’d hate to end our sessions, but at the same time I feel it’s unethical to continue his treatment. What should I do?”_

_“Whoa, slow down.”_

Steve could totally agree with Stark. What? Why did Bucky consider to end the therapy? It wasn’t fair! Did Steve do something? Besides the fact that he tried to talk about the demon instead of focusing on the actual therapy. But Bucky dodged most of his attempts and still they worked well together! (And besides the fact that he used a dead rat to spy on him, but Bucky didn’t know about that. He mustn’t have. Right?)

_“Let’s start again. Why now?”_

_“I don’t know if I can focus enough on work. He’s so… distracting!” Bucky practically yelled._

_“I get it, but you had this same problem going on since you first saw him, so_ why now _?”, Tony pushed the matter._

Steve’s never been so thankful. He was just as confused as Stark.

_“Yeah, well, first he was just handsome and cute. But now that I know him better…” Bucky didn’t finish the sentence._

Damn. Steve would’ve given his own hand to know how Bucky wanted to finish that sentence. Hopefully not with ‘but then it turned out that he’s the crazy result of an experiment gone wrong’.

_“Is it because of the demon incident?” Tony asked so quietly that Steve almost missed it._

_“Yes. No. I guess?” Bucky sighed frustratedly. “It made everything… more intense, for sure. I know it has nothing to do with me, it’s the Soldier inside me, but I feel the allurement as well.”_

Steve choked on air. It was… strange. He didn’t mean any kind of allurement. It was the point of his pact with the demon, after all: Bucky shouldn’t feel the difference.

Except if it wasn’t because of the Winter Soldier. Steve couldn’t deny the fact that the shared experience made his affection toward Bucky stronger. Maybe it was the same for Bucky as well? Was it magical? Steve didn’t feel it to be a power thing at all. But oh my God, what if he really bound Bucky accidentally? He had to fix that, he couldn’t let that stand!

_Tony hummed._

_“And he’s… see, I don’t exactly want him to be my patient.”_

_“Well, I never thought you'd say something like that ever, Buckaroo,” Stark teased._

Steve couldn’t breathe. The mere thought of not seeing Bucky again made him feel small and sick, a flashback of the helplessness he felt when he had to spent entire seasons in hospital. Even without anything actually happening, he already felt lonely and abandoned.

Controversely at the same time his protective instincts rose as well because Bucky sounded wrecked and Stark’s joyful tone was not respecting that and Steve wanted to wipe Bucky up in his arms to shield him from the whole world.

But Bucky probably didn’t need that. Bucky wanted to get rid of Steve. The squeeze around his chest returned with full force as Steve listened more.

_Bucky was laughing._

Steve’s anger retreated at the sound. Only the confusion and loneliness left.

_“Me neither, shellhead, but here we are.”_

_“Sooo what’re you gonna do?” Stark asked. “As your boss I’d say your patient’s interests are to come first, and as your friend I’d say you have to let yourself live at last. Luckily, these two can be achieved by the same course of action.”_

_“I don’t want to abandon him halfway through!”, Bucky protested, then, after a short pause, more quietly: “What if he rejects me? I’m just a cripple after all.”_

Wait, what? Steve was more confused than ever. What the hell were they talking about now? Steve must’ve missed something.

_“Then he’d be an idiot, first and foremost, and I’d had to fire him because I can’t employ idiots,” Stark snorted._

No! Bucky wanted to get rid of Steve because he wanted to see someone? That was more devastating than any other news so far. Steve hunched on his seat, defeated. If this was the case he couldn’t even fight for Bucky staying. That would be too selfish. Bucky deserved happiness, and Steve should not interfere. He should be better than that.

_“Don’t you dare…”_

_“And it’s not abandonment,” Stark finished, not minding Bucky’s points, “it’s a referral. Rhodey would step in and take your place, end of story.”_

_Bucky suppressed a laugh.“Rhodes radiates authority, pairing them together would be an utter clusterfuck. I’ll write that on my official report, with these exact words, blaming you for the disaster.”_

_“I’m sure they would be delighted for your spectacular vocabulary. Who do you suggest then?”_

_“No idea. We just… we click so well, I dunno if anyone else…”_

_“Janet? Or Sue? They are pretty far from authority figures.”_

_Silence._

_“Janet. Maybe.”_

_More silence._

_“And if you ever call my friend ‘just a cripple’ again I’ll end you, Buckaroo.”_

Steve couldn’t help but smile at the quiet addition even in his heartbroken state.

*

Steve wasn’t sure what to expect when he stepped into Bucky’s office the next time. He wasn’t sure it wouldn’t be the last time he saw Bucky, and the mere thought of that made his chest tight and hurt. As much as he hated it first, he couldn’t imagine his life without therapy - and without Bucky - anymore. He trusted Bucky more than anyone else, which was odd (considering who long and deep his friendship ran with Nat or Sam), but at the same time it felt natural.

The idea that Bucky would quit made his whole body and soul sore.

But on the other hand, he should let Bucky be happy, he shouldn’t hold him back. If Bucky needed more time to date someone, maybe they could just dial down the number of the sessions. Or if they end them completely, maybe Bucky would be up to a less professional friendship. If he wanted that. If Steve wanted that at all. Maybe it would hurt more. Everything was a confusing mess in Steve's head.

“Hi Steve,” was that just his paranoia-born imagination or was Bucky’s smile really insecure? “Sit, please, I have something to discuss…”

His stomach clenched. They always talked, no need for special announcement, so there it was. Bucky was really going to quit. Steve swallowed hard and sat, his head was swimming

“I think you are doing great, Steve. You had less incidents and your outbursts became more controlled since we started working together,” Bucky began after he sat down himself.

 _Sweetening the sour pill_ , Steve thought, and somehow this gesture made him irrationally angry. He felt his nails digging into his palms and bile rising in his throat as his power was ready to burst out.

He didn’t even know if Bucky’s words were true. He sure didn’t feel any calmer or more controlled at the moment.

“I have conflicting interests and that’s not good for a therapist. I was wondering for a while now what to do about it,” Bucky continued, and Steve had to close his eyes. This whole conversation felt like a badly written horror story.

“Just spill it,” Steve groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

But before Bucky could open his mouth again, the whole building _shrieked_ around them in an awful, ear-shattering scream, and the lights turned bright red. Steve pushed his hands to his ears and saw from the corner of his eye that Bucky mirrored him. The sound lasted for a good five seconds before it stopped to be replaced with softly tolling bells.

“Wh-what the hell?!” Steve snapped, anger tearing through him, magic rising inside him, for the moment not finding a lot of things to target. Some corpses sitting up  in the morgue was part of the routine by now. (Steve and Bucky had composed an official apology letter a few sessions ago. The workers’ answer had been pretty resigned.) It was easier not to snap violently while Bucky was near to ground him.

“Jarvis?” Bucky, already up on his feet, looked around with his only arm reaching for Steve.

Steve accepted it without hesitation and stood next to Bucky, their shoulders brushing together. _Right_ , he remembered abruptly: Tony Stark was famous for designing an artifical nervous system and inserting it into his building, for his deceased guardian’s spirit to inhabit. The system was the miracle child - an unheard combination of both engineering and magical practices. It was easy to forget about it, though, because what was left of Edwin Jarvis was just a quiet observer most of the time.

But he worked - among many other things - the alarms. Steve’d experienced it before: if an unauthorized person was inside the building, a quiet humming came from the walls, reminding everyone to be cautious. (And freaked half of the people out by accident.) If a threatening crowd gathered around the compound, blue lights lit up near every entrance. Everyone was informed about these small signs. He even knew about the red lights, though he only read about them in the manuals, because that meant the building was under direct attack.

The manuals never mentioned the human scream, though.

“My apologies, Sergeant,” the disembodied voice from everywhere and nowhere answered. A slight shiver ran through Steve. Though he had no control over Jarvis - never wanted it -, he was once a deceased human being, and yet Steve didn’t feel him one bit without closely focusing on him. Maybe because the building - the body - wasn’t dead since it never lived in the first place. Steve’s sense of ghosts had always been faint. Jarvis was not a target for his necromancy, which the power recognized before it even consciously occurred to Steve. “I did not expect such a powerful assault on me. We are currently under attack.”

“Geez, you don’t say,” Bucky grumbled, but he didn’t appear shaken. “How many and where?”

Steve remained by Bucky’s side and listened to the conversation. His heartbeat had slowed down a bit already. Bucky acted like the situation was normal and not seriously fucked up - the consciousness of a person _in a building_ was hurt _so much_ that it _screamed_ \- and Steve followed his lead easily.

“I advise against joining the defence’s efforts, and suggest you above all seek shelter for your safety, Sergeant.”

That made Bucky’s eyebrows shoot up. “And why is that?”

“Because the attackers call themselves HYDRA.”

All color drained from Bucky’s face in an instant and he stumbled backwards. “What… what did you …?”

Steve caught him before he fell. Bucky was shaking like a leaf.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant.”

“Bucky?”

 _Now_ Steve was definitely scared, and the electric feeling of power filled the room around them, covering them like a blanket, threatening to overwhelm them. Steve bit his tongue and clenched his fist to stop himself from actually using the necromancy. It didn’t help that Bucky had to blink a few times before he was able to focus on Steve.

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“I… I can’t”, Bucky’s breath was too quick. “I don’t want… they’re.”

“Could you explain what the fucking hell is going on?”

“Hostile forces beyond defense lines,” Jarvis’s report almost sounded indifferent. Tension was building in Steve steadily.

“They… they’re here. They’ve come for me.”

Steve saw two ways for calming someone down, and he went with the gentle one first: he embraced Bucky. He could feel the slight trembling of his body, but no easing of the tension. So Steve shook him, just a little. “Bucky, snap out of it!” he hissed, commanding. “Talk to me, in full sentences!”

The tone made the trick. Bucky shivered, took three deep breaths, and straightened up. “Okay. Okay. I’m good, thanks.”

Steve didn’t need thanks, he needed answers, and soon. Necromancy rattled in his bones and he felt he was ready to raise all the dead of this fucking city if needed. At the edge of his mind he felt the few corpses he had turned to zombies were already closer to the building, but they were still far away and their number far from enough...

Bucky gently freed himself from Steve’s arms. _Right._ “I guess you remember the Soldier,” he slowly but steadily walked to his desk and opened the highest drawer with a key that hung around his neck on a chain. “When I was in the Army, I was captured behind enemy lines.”

Steve blinked twice. Bucky took out two handguns and stuck one of them in his belt, not bothering with holsters. The other he kept in his hand.

“The demon was forced into me by my captors.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Steve whispered, horrified. “I never thought….”

“Well, no sane person would allow a demon to possess his body, right?” Bucky’s laugh was as dry as a desert. “And certainly none with any kind of agency. Well. HYDRA wasn’t worried about that. Their magicians were controlling us for a for a while.”

Steve wanted to know more, but he was all too aware of the bells tolling and the red lights. There was no room for a chitchat and a story exchange: just the bare necessities.

“HYDRA thinks the Soldier is theirs, therefore they think I am theirs.”

A growl escaped Steve’s throat before he could prevent it, and he grabbed Bucky’s hand. Bucky stared at him until he released his hold.

 _Of course._ Bucky needed his only hand. But still. Steve’s frustration was almost palpable. He would not let them have Bucky. He would protect him until his last breath. And yeah, Steve was sickly and seemed fragile, but he was a fighter and he was the strongest necromancer of their generation. He would not go down quietly.

Whether Bucky understood that inherently or just saw something in Steve’s eyes - determination, perhaps -, he nodded, and walked out the door, and Steve followed close behind.

The corridor seemed empty and quiet. “Jarvis?”

“My body’s structural integrity is highly compromised in the east wing’s outer side and between the sixth and seventh corridor of the laboratory wing and around the back entrance of the main structure. At least eighteen attackers got inside in two waves, but it is very likely that the number’s higher. My sensors are corrupted and -”

Before Jarvis could even finish his report, someone appeared in front of them. The black-clad figure’s gear was most likely highly protective, and he wore a ski mask of some sort with strange goggles. Bucky moved before Steve could. He shot the man’s kneecap, then lunged forward and hit him in the head with the handle of his gun. It was fast like a snake striking its prey, but it was also loud: Steve had no chance to react, but the gunshot and the scream of the assailant made his only good ear ring.

The man crumpled like a sack of potatoes, his weapon - fuck, that was a _huge_ rifle in his hand - banged on the floor.

Steve felt like he was being underwater, he barely heard Bucky saying “Never thought I’d need a muffler on these.”

Steve giggled, his head swimming, his knees weak from the one too many adrenaline rushes of the past minutes. He was pretty sure his powers went bonkers, because he could feel his strength evaporating, but he wasn’t sure what he reanimated this time. His focus was a bit lost. Or a lot.

“They cut us off from the armory”, Bucky said, turned left at the next corner to the staircase, and started to go upwards. Steve followed, though he had his doubts about the direction.

“Where are we going?” he panted two floors later, and though his vitals returned closer to normal and his hearing got better he was out of his breath already, his asthma threatening with a vicious attack caused by the workout. He pulled out his inhaler and hated the need for it as he gasped.

“They want me. If I leave their attack won’t be concentrated on the Home anymore, so I’ll take the chopper I guess.”

Steve had no objections as it sounded like a sensible plan.

The HYDRA lot may have figured out Bucky’s intentions, because suddenly there were shots again, this time coming from above. Bucky reciprocated with the same while plastering Steve and himself to the wall.

He was a good shot, or at least, everyone at the Home said so, and Steve definitely knew Bucky had been a sharpshooter in the Army, and yet no one fell off the stairs above. Steve figured that Bucky tried to be the good guy here by going non-lethal. Which was stupid.

“Dammit, kill one of them already”, he hissed in Bucky’s ear. “I need corpses to work with!”

“I don’t wanna…”

“Bucky”, Steve growled. “Have you _seen_ that rifle? They’ve got no concern about our life!”

It was not about morality; killing was a bare necessity. Steve was ready to argue, to persuade Bucky - several reasons floated around his mind, some more coherent than others, and he was going to spell them all out if all else failed despite his impatience and need for action. He would draw a fucking Venn diagam for Bucky if he must.

The Home was under severe, probably the most severe attack of its existence, _of course_ they were obliged to do everything in their power to defend themselves and each other. Bucky had friends among the staff of the Home. At this point there was no way to tell if they were okay. And Steve was not a trained soldier, and the dead he summoned from outside sources were not in the building to help him: killing one attacker meant more than just one less to the HYDRA ranks.

Strategically speaking, Bucky had to overcome his distaste pretty soon if he wanted to win this round.

And Bucky wanted to win, obviously. Or at least he didn’t want to lose, which was basically the same this time.

He took a deep breath, leaned away from the wall to have a better aim, and with his hip pressed to the handrail he shot twice. Steve immediately felt the presence of a new target in his head. He murmured a few words to steady himself for the upcoming experience, and let his power out. The body didn’t welcome it, but Steve forced his necromancy inside, filled the vessel with it aggressively, not letting himself be bothered by the resistance.

Steve closed his eyes. The corpse opened its.

It got messy. The zombie grabbed one of his former partner’s ankle and pulled him down. It took just a second to yank the victim forward, and the corpse sank it’s teeth to the poor bastard’s neck. Steve felt soft meat in his own mouth as his puppet ripped out a man’s jugular. It was a relatively quick way to die - either from the lack of oxygen or from the bloodloss-, but not immediate. Steve had time to spare for the first zombie and a second attack.

That was the time the screaming started.

The necromancy filled up the new body just as gladly as it did the first.

Steve felt the bullets hit the zombie’s chest, and he made it snare with bare, bloody teeth at them. How do you kill something that’s already dead? They should try to at least incapacitate the zombie, rip its limbs off, that would slow it down, but even then nothing would stop it from following orders. And Steve’s order burned like a torch in his head, clear and without complications or restraints or fine prints: _kill_.

He wasn’t shy about it and at the moment he had no doubts. These man had hurt Bucky in the past. They came here with the intent of harming others. (They may have hurt others already. Steve couldn’t think about that now.) They came here to cause more suffering to Bucky, to try taking him away from Steve.

Steve wasn’t gonna let that happen. Not in this lifetime, not ever.

He was going to protect Bucky, whatever the cost.

So he called out to every dead under his command. He felt the animals his power had found earlier nearby. He felt the corpses coming from the morgue. He felt the four attackers upstairs: the one Bucky killed and the three others the zombies finished up. The fifth one was inevitably dying, too, and soon would be useful for him.

His command radiated through his connection to every single one of them: _kill. Make it quick or make them suffer, I don’t care. But don’t let them hurt anyone. Don’t let them near the civilians. Protect others. Kill the attackers. They came here to hurt us. To take away what’s ours. We won’t let that stand. Give them hell. Show no mercy. Protect at all cost._

By the time the fifth - and last - man upstairs was down, Steve opened his eyes, dark satisfaction curling in his guts and a soft smile on his lips.

Bucky stared at him. Was it… fear in his eyes? Steve smiled at him encouragingly. Danger was over - there was no need for fear anymore. With the dead under his command, Steve was sure he could protect them.

“It’s okay”, he said, “we’re safe.”

A small whine escaped Bucky’s throat.

“You didn’t even - did you hear them?”

Steve frowned.

“Oh my God, you didn’t even hear them begging.”

“I was concentrating. I was listening to the zombies.”

Bucky looked downright terrified. Steve wasn’t smiling anymore. Bucky should be happy. Firstly, Steve fended off the threat, and secondly, he proved that therapy had worked out pretty well, right? He didn't reanimate another cemetery like he would have done it before their sessions: he succesfully concentrated his power and efforts to the area nearby. That was a huge progress. And Bucky’d never had an issue with Steve’s necromancy before.  So why was Bucky upset?

Steve knew that killing was… far from okay. But they were defending themselves. Steve was defending Bucky. He wouldn’t apologize for that. Letting these HYDRA assholes hurt others for any reason would be worse. But instead of explaining all of this, he opted to just say “Let’s go.”

They’ll have time for proper discussions later, away from the danger zone.

After a moment of hesitation - and wow, that hurt more than Steve would ever admit -, Bucky followed him.

When they arrived to the next floor, five zombies stared at Steve with empty eyes. The floor tiles were flooded with thick blood, the bodies were soaked, most of them still oozing from their open wounds and blood dripping to the sea of liquid and flesh below despite the lack of heartbeat. Bucky averted his gaze from them and looked at his own hand instead, his hand that was still grasping the gun that started this carnage.

“I thought necromancers needed some time before they could resurrect a body.”

A few hours, at minimum, a few days for the weaker or less practiced ones. Steve nodded, and the zombies took their places around them to make sure that only over their literally dead bodies could Steve and Bucky be reached.

“They do. They also need rituals to perform their magic.” He needed neither. “I’m different. I’m stronger.”

They walked quietly, until Steve stopped abruptly. He sensed it: the servants of his power finally arriving to the Home from the morgue.

Steve needed an undisturbed place and a chance to fully focus on the battle. He was sure his mental images about the attacker’s black uniform were enough to guide the zombies under his control and to let them know who was enemy and who was not, but he didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. It would be better if he could see and therefore control the scene more precisely. “Hurry up,” he said, and started to run to the roof.

After a few hasty steps, though, he had to slow down to a casual jog, because of the sharp pain in his lungs. He clutched at his inhaler. It wasn’t far, just two more floors, but Steve was panting heavily as he bursted through the door, and his breaths were wheezing. He was grateful for the resting opportunity as he dropped to his knees near the edge of the roof where he had an adequate vantage point. He didn't plan to move for the foreseeable future, at least not physically.

Bucky, however, had better ideas. He helped Steve to his feet and led him a dozen or so more steps for the better sight. Steve obeyed - Bucky was the marksman with experience, after all. He dropped to his knees on the new place again and tried to watch over the whole scene under him.

The first glance hardly offered anything promising, but Steve knew it would get better with each moment.

There were at least three dozen people in black down there, busy beating up the already-dead animals that had been distracting them. (It was actually more effective than shooting. Ruin the muscles enough, and the zombies wouldn't be able to chase after you, or break the nails and teeth out so they wouldn't be able to scratch and bite. Without a necromancer's intelligence in their minds to direct them manually, zombies were not smart enough to use tools or weapons.) Most of the enemy rallied in the Home’s garden - Manhattan’s rare jewel of green lawn and old trees -, around some figures standing in a circle, wearing red robes or something. Steve frowned. It looked like… some kind of…

But before he could figure it out, the zombies arrived. The morgue must have had a quiet day, because there were only three of them. ( _Yet_ , his mind added.) Shots were fired to no avail. Steve closed his eyes, ready to slip further into the necromancy-filled bodies, to take a better look, when Bucky started screaming  next to him.

Power raged in Steve as his head snapped to Bucky’s direction, trying to find what caused his distress.

There was nothing, at least not to simple human eyes, but Bucky had dropped to his knees and they were alone on the roof with only Steve’s zombies. And Steve was dead certain that though they might be disturbing to a human, they meant absolutely no harm to Bucky, quite the opposite: in an instant they gathered closer around him to shield. There was no blood and no sign of a physical attack, and yet Bucky had dropped his gun and was grasping his own hair, sobbing out in pain.

Steve was paralyzed for a few valuable moments by Bucky’s continuous screaming. Down in the garden the zombies halted too as Steve’s focus was solely on his friend’s pain, and all the earlier instructions got erased by the need to _PROTECT BUCKY_ \- something those down, Steve could see, wouldn’t be able to do.

Steve reset them to the earlier command while simultaneously making sure the rooftop ones stayed around Bucky. Luckily years of practice made Steve outstanding at multitasking when it came to commanding zombies. He tried to figure out what was happening. At least Bucky’s screams stopped only to be replaced by occasional small cries and sobs, and he clenched his eyes shut and his whole body was so tense Steve was afraid he’d break if he moved.

Desperation began consuming Steve, and that was Not Good while he was using his skills. He already felt rage turning into more destructive, more cruel commands, ones he would regret later if he'd gave in to them, ones that would make Bucky and anyone else be disgusted by him. Steve definitely didn't want to loose his humanity. He even closed his eyes to try and use the very techniques Bucky taught him, to calm himself down, to control his…

Red.

Blue.

Red and blue.

Red as fire, red as blood. Blue as ice, blue as eyes.

It was at the edge of his perception, but it was creeping closer.

Steve thought he finally understood it. The figures in red robes down there: that was for magic, that was for a summoning. They were calling Bucky’s demon. They wanted to use the Winter Soldier for their purposes.

Steve felt ice in his veins.

It was more instinct than conscious intent when he knelt over Bucky. He tried to grab Bucky’s wrist but an invisible barrier stopped his hands from a few inches of him, and Steve looked with horror as maroon lines appeared from the concrete around Bucky’s figure. Panic scrambled in his head as he tried to force his hand through, to reach Bucky, but he couldn’t do it _oh my God I can’t reach—_

“Grab my hand!” he wasn’t aware he was screaming until he heard his own voice. Bucky didn’t hear him, or at least didn’t react, and then Steve saw what the lines were: the neat contour of a precise pentagram, the most common type of magic symbols, used for summoning, binding or limitation.

Or, like in this case probably, for all of those.

Steve lunged against the barrier of the pentagram again. He couldn't think clearly. “Bucky, _grab my hand!_ ”

Bucky’s movements were slow as he glanced up and stuck his only hand forward uncertainly. His shoulders hunched forward the moment he let go of his own head like only his squeeze had kept him up this far. As soon as the edge of his fingers brushed at the barriers, though, he screamed again and he fell to the ground in agony.

Steve thought he had been angry earlier.

He was wrong.

The whole world was lost to the rage now.

He plastered both his palms to the barrier, and he _roared_. He didn’t care who may hear him, he didn’t care who may get hurt, he didn’t care about anything and anyone, just Bucky.

 _MINE_ , he roared. _LET ME THERE._

The force that separated them offered no answer, though. Steve didn’t care about that either.

His power wasn’t flooding or radiating. This time it was a spear: Steve gathered it in his mind, formed it until it had a sharp spike of a point, and then he stabbed with all the force he could find in himself.

Magic clashed with magic. The necromancy sliced through the barrier like it was nothing more than smoke.

Bucky, still on the ground, twitched and moaned and his voice was _wrong_ and _broken_ and Steve wanted to comfort him, he wanted to scoop him up into his embrace and hush him and tell him everything will be all right and he wanted to—

The _blueandredandblack_ was back, right in front of Steve’s mental eyes. As magic shattered and fell to pieces and maroon lines blurred into oblivion, something deadly and dangerous rose into its place, familiar and yet devastatingly alien.

_Red as wine, red as fire, red as blood._

The demon was closer to the surface than ever and it looked directly at Steve.

_Blue as ice, blue as sky, blue as eyes._

Steve was not sure he would see Bucky at all even if he’d be able to physically open his eyes. The presence of the otherworldly creature was so palpable it weighed a real heft on his chest - his chest that was not strong enough, he wouldn’t be able to breathe, he’d need to—

_Black as space, black as grave, black as night._

Steve yanked his power in front of himself like a shield.  It blocked some of the weight of the presence from his mind, and they stared at each other with the demon. The challenge was obvious in their stances. Steve collected every drop of power he had in and around himself - he knew he’d need all.

In a logical way, Steve was aware of the fact that it was only happening in his mind, it was nothing more than a projection as his brain tried to help him cope. But his mind gave no fucks about logic when it came to magic and the staring match with a demon was just as real as a punch in the face would have been.

For a brief moment that felt like an eternity they didn’t move at all.

Then a new kind of magic breezed through the air between them like a floral scent in a rotting graveyard, and both of them shivered.

 _‘Looks like you weren’t enough, little Necromancer_ ,’ the demon thought, in a way almost teasing and in another, totally indifferent.

 _‘Aren’t you mad at them? Don’t you mind them pulling your strings like you’re nothing?_ ’ Steve couldn’t hide his shock.

 _‘They are nothing,’_ the creature didn’t even flinch as the new magic caressed it. ‘ _I can take my time while they have their fun and I will destroy them afterwards. I told you_ —’

 _‘You serve if you must but you won’t ever be an ally_ ,’ Steve recalled the exact words.

The demon smiled. It was terrifying.

 _‘You fought against me,’_ Steve remembered this too.

 _‘I fought against them as well, the first time.’_ What the demon did would probably be considered a shrug in his book.

 _‘I won’t let them have Bucky_ ,’ Steve swore.

 _‘They don’t need him. They have me_ ,’ the demon replied. ‘ _He is nothing.’_

That was the wrong thing to say.

It instantly drew Steve out of his stupor, back from that almost alternative dimension he spent the last few seconds in, back to his own world that was threatening to crumble around him, back to his power, back to his _rage_.

And if ever, Steve was _furious_ now.

“No.”

It was simple like that. He wouldn’t let it happen. Just… no. His tone was emotionless as no voice could ever possibly express what was taking place in his soul. “Bucky is _not_ nothing.” He was more like _everything_. Everything that mattered right now, everything to protect, everything to treasure; everything to love, everything to… lose? No.

Steve was many things, but above all he was stubborn, and he didn’t know how to lose. He wasn’t gonna learn that today.

He inhaled, slow, controlled, enjoying the knowledge that oxygen filled his bad lungs, that his bad heart was still beating in his chest, his mind was still able to make his frail body function.

Then he exhaled and let go completely.

He didn’t mind, didn’t care anymore. No more boundaries. No more suppressions. No more self-control. He relaxed all the magical muscles that gripped his power since he was seven, and then fifteen years old. In an instant, necromancy rose and filled the air. The smell of dust and rot and decease covered them. The soft noises of falling, the sound of last breaths drew out of dying ones embraced them. Steve felt the tingle of snow and ash in his mouth.

“You little piece of shit.”

He wasn’t sure if he meant the demon or the attackers, or the whole world in general that threatened to rob him of Bucky, not that it mattered.

Nothing mattered when his necromancy was shrieking in joy of being free and was wreaking havoc around him, testing if the restraints around it were really gone, _are you sure_ , absolutely gone, _really?_ And it leaped into nothing and everything and it found the Winter Soldier.

The power almost purred with satisfaction in the face of the challenge.

The demon stood confidently. ‘ _What are you gonna do? I can’t serve two masters, fool_ ,’ it scolded Steve like a child who was too stupid for his own good.

Not like the necromancy cared, and Steve definitely didn’t, either. He felt his lips curling into a predatory grin, and he felt more than thought, _we’ll see._

Not that he wanted to belie the Soldier. He wanted to prove.

Necromancy swang forward and curled around the Soldier, but the flowery scent, a warm layer of outer magic stood between them, preventing the contact and shielding the creature. Steve scowled and leaned forward like his bare weight could crush the barrier.

The Soldier’s laugh was low-pitched.

Steve’s power lunged again and again, adding more and more force, going from a general attempt to full-focus quickly. At first the magic felt cold, but it warmed steadily: Steve found himself sweating as he stooped, palms on the ground, gravel digging into his skin, the little spikes of sensation grounding him to the moment and not letting him float with the magical outbursts.

The necromancy stroke out and retreated and beset and stroke out again in what seemed like a series of endless assaults, until…

Steve felt a crack.

The power lunged at it like a shark sensing blood in the water.

The demon wasn’t laughing anymore.

Steve grinned. “I am a necromancer and you are a demon. We’re both creatures of death, Winter Soldier. You will obey me.”

Names were powerful and it was a name the demon had chosen for himself: not as good as the real one, but close enough. The crack opened up a bit more, and Steve’s necromancy was forcing through it. He knew, however, that more was needed to overcome the other binding. He wondered for a brief moment if he was even remembering the rituals correctly anymore since he hadn’t used them for more than a decade, but it wasn’t like he had anything to lose by trying.

Steve crept closer to Bucky and grabbed his wrist. He felt the layer of magic separating them: a bit shiny, sticky and brownish, like the molten sugar that hardened on delicious apples. Bucky seemed like he was unconscious, though Steve wasn’t sure if that was actually the case or if he was living in a vivid hallucination offered by his brain to deal with the events.

Steve punched the gravel with his free hand until his skin was cut open in several places.

The Soldier tried to stop him, and this time the necromancy was what stopped it. Steve may not have been be the creature’s master yet, but he was able to defend himself from it, something he hadn’t been aware beforehand.

It was a pleasant surprise.

Steve started drawing.

The sign of power. The rune of rule. The sigil of Necromancy.

A mark to strengthen the magical hold. A beacon to support focus. A stamp to label a possession.

All of them joined into one great sign of force.

Steve yanked Bucky’s wrist into the middle of the drawing, grabbed it with his free hand, and slammed the other one, the bloody one with open wounds down into its masterpiece, pushing magic into the bind, coercing his will and forcing his power.

“I call thee, Winter Soldier. I call thee, Bucky Barnes. Hear me and obey.”

The words rolled off his tongue like pearls, unadulterated and natural, and with each syllable the crack around the demon grew and the necromancy flew through it and around the figure.

The Solder’s attempt to fight was half-hearted at best - or at least Steve felt so. He fended off its dark tendrils easily and his power wasn’t a set of tentacles but a full blanket around it, tight and spread over.

“ _We made a pact, Winter Soldier, I gave you a command, Winter Soldier; now hear me and answer, Winter Soldier, hear and obey._ ”

Maybe it was the number, calling him three times. Maybe it was the reminder. Maybe it was just a random moment when everything became too much and the power spilled through the dam.

But it happened.

The flowery magic that bound the demon broke with a sweet bong, and necromancy slotted into place with a sound that reminded Steve of wing strokes of the ravens he befriended once. The familiar smell of graveyard rotting filled the air, and Steve was smiling, and the Soldier shivered under the weight of his new-old binding.

 _‘Powerful_ ,’ he commented lightly. _‘_ _Y_ _ou called and I heard and I shall obey, Necromancer.’_

Bucky opened his eyes.

*

It was quick after that.

Steve didn’t kill them, and neither did he order the Soldier to kill them.

That would have been too easy - and totally unnecessary at this point. (Steve didn't enjoy killing anyone, but he was not afraid of death in any way, shape or form, and he'd do worse things to protect his loved ones. This was not that scenario.) With his necromancy around the demon, Steve was almost calm and he was able to think rationally.

He kept Bucky by his side - at least, he kept Bucky’s body by his side. He was pretty sure his friend was still unconscious despite being able to move.

It turned out that his zombies fell down, abandoned the moment his focus had snapped to Bucky and the Soldier, but the staff of the Home stood their ground against the attackers nevertheless. (Perks of having a handful of supernatural beings at hand.) Still, Steve ordered the Soldier to knock every single one of the HYDRA members unconscious, and he smiled when he felt the brush of the demonic energy around the compound and at the thuds of falling bodies. The Soldier didn’t need to move in a physical realm to be freakingly effective.

It was not revenge, but it was still sweet.

After that there was nothing to do but wait.

Being in the presence of a demon not doing anything specific was unnerving, but Steve made sure to wait until Rhodes joined them on the roof and reassured him that everything was safe and secure and every attacker was contained or dead.

Well, the dead part was mostly on Steve, but good luck proving it - unless Bucky spoke up against him. And anyway, it was self-defence. He looked back at Rhodes innocently, and was surprised himself at how easy it was to stand the glare of a minor greek sea-god while he had a demon as backup.

*

There were certain things that help you to put things into perspective. Being under attack, killing, elslaving a demon that lives in the body of your friend, witnessing your best friend enslaving the demon that lives in your body, these kind of things, for instance.

So when Bucky regained his consiousness from the Soldier, and they estabilished that yes, they were alive and no, HYDRA had no control over anything and anyone, Bucky looked Steve dead in the eye.

“I’m not gonna be your therapist anymore. I want to be your boyfriend, instead.”

There they were, shivering and bloody and shaken and all, but for Bucky, telling this was top priority and he didn’t want to miss his chance - _again_.

For this, Steve loved him more than ever, and while still admiring his bravery he managed to croak out “I wish for nothing else,” and he couldn’t let Bucky have all the credit for bravery, so he gathered all of his courage and leaned in to kiss him.

It wasn’t sweet. It was intense and electrifying and filled with the aftertaste of magic and destruction. It had sweat and blood and exhaustion in it, but also enthusiasm and tenderness and passion. It was delicate and shy and the most precious thing to ever exist.

It was perfect.

But it was over too soon, and when they separated, Steve mirrored the dopey, shell-shocked smile Bucky wore.

“Are you sure? I’m just…” Bucky started.

“You are not just _anything._ You are the most amazing person I’ve ever met,” Steve interrupted before Bucky had the chance to finish his sentence. Bucky grinned like he won the lottery. “And I’ve been in love with you since maybe the first time we met, so…”

“You are so overdramatic, Steve Rogers.”

“Huh, look who’s talking.”

“Says the man who grabs zombies out of their graves for fun and who was able to bind a demon against its summoners by sheer power of stubbornness, or so I heard.”

Steve’s smile faltered.

“Heard?” he echoed faintly.

Bucky touched his own temple. “I'm not in control when... but I... I remember,” he admitted slowly.

Steve flinched.

“You think… don’t you… do you mind?” he asked finally, stumbling over the words, voice low. “I’ll always be a freak. It won’t… stop, it won’t disappear…”

“Steve,” Bucky’s hand on his shoulder was warm and steady as their eyes locked, “there are things we’ll have to discuss later, boundaries to set and all, but I’m very well aware of who you are, of what you are. You know my baggage, too. I think it’s a good base to build something on.” He pulled him closer and embraced him in a warm hug. “I love you, with or without your power, I don’t give a flying fuck about your zombies. I love _you_.”

“And I love you.”

Steve breathed in Bucky’s scent and felt peace.

They didn't move for a long time, so long that it almost felt uncomfortable and definitely made Steve's limbs go numb and with adrenaline deflating from his system exhaustion threatened to overcome him soon.

“But you really should stop binding me,” Bucky breathed out almost inaudibly. “You saved the day, I know, but you were pretty terrifying, Stevie.”

Steve ducked his head shyly. “I’m sorry for taking away your agency and killing people, but I’m not sorry for surviving,” he whispered back. “I was so afraid, Bucky, and you were already down at that time and screaming and… I was so afraid to lose you. I'd do anything to protect you.” But Bucky didn't seem to be relieved by his confession. Steve sucked in his lower lip. “I'll work it out, okay? I promise. I'll work it out.”

“Oh, I hope you meant _we'll_ work it out,” Bucky scolded him, and the mood suddenly got so much lighter than before. “I won’t pretend I’m not bothered at all, it’s definitely an issue, but one we can work on.” Bucky touched Steve’s cheek lightly. “I'm pretty sure you had a therapist who made sure that you shouldn't forget that you're not a lone wolf anymore, you have friends and whoa, good news, now you have a boyfriend too!”

Steve couldn't help but laugh, this little speech was just so Bucky. He was glad to have him back.

“Hmmm, right. I'm considering group therapy with said boyfriend, you know? That might help both of us with the processing of our shared trauma?”

Bucky sighed. “And I thought I'm over therapy myself,” he unfolded himself and stretched his arms out. “Nevermind, I'm game, if you can persuade any of my colleagues to work with me in their group. I'm a terrible patient.”

Steve laughed so hard he almost fell over the edge of the roof. “I can't wait to see.”

*

_Three months later_

“Hi, sweetheart,” Bucky’s welcome kiss was passionate, full of warmth and acceptance and Steve reciprocated with equal enthusiasm. “How was your day?”

“I have no idea who thought that making a fairy a therapist is a good idea, but that person was wrong, totally wrong!” Steve complained, but without any edge to his words. He sniffed the room curiously. Under the scented candles’ aroma Bucky’s cooking promised to be delicious for Thanksgiving.

“Let me guess. Janet laughed at you while she was pummeling your arguments to the Earth?”

“Basically. I _wanted_ to be mad at her, Bucky, but _how could I_ while she had me under fairy magic with that sweet laugh?!”

“Careful about the phrasing, I may get jealous. You agreed on her using her charm during therapy sessions as a practice, right?”

“Unfortunately I did.” Steve grinned and changed the subject. “Did you know she and Tony had a bet on us?”

That made Bucky’s brows arch up. “On what? How long ‘till we fuck or for how long ‘till we date?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Too bad. Tony should shut his cakehole, he was the one who needed nine years for gathering his wits to propose to Pepper!”

“Well, you can tell him this yourself, the two of them will come over for dinner tonight with Sam and Nat.”

“Did he found out something about the HYDRA?"

“Other than they're supernatural-hater, hypocryte assholes? No, nothing knew yet. He swears he'll 'upgrade Jarvis' or something like that so he'll be able to help more effectively next time, though.”

Bucky shivered. “Yeah, because a living building was not creepy enough, but that's Tony for you, I suppose.”

“Well, I'm most certainly not telling something like that to my boss, but you feel free to do so.”

Bucky shrugged. “I've certainly said worse things to him in the past.”

“Maybe you'll really have the chance. He said he wants to test this further.” Steve touched Bucky's bracelet softly.

After the Rooftop Incident, both Steve and Bucky were escorted to medical - where Steve conveniently passed out for more than thirty hours.

After that, he finally had the chance to discuss things with Bucky - first and foremost, the worrying possibility of Steve controlling Bucky through the Soldier. It wasn't like Steve would use it against Bucky, but still, it made an even greater power imbalance than a therapist dating their patient, so they agreed it needed a solution.

They consulted with Rhodes and Janet who offered insight with different kinds of magic, and with Tony who brought the technical and engineering knowledge into the brainstorming. Then they worked and worked until they came up with the solution.

It was a mixture of their magical strength Bucky's human resilience and Tony's technological genius: a device, formed as a bracelet that contained the magic. It passed Steve's control over the Soldier to Bucky, while ensuring that no one but Bucky was able to remove the device - it was linked not to the body but to the soul, but it needed the physical presence of the bracelet to work. It was a clever solution.

Steve (and Bucky, too) loved it. Steve still wasn't sure how he would be able to ever repay the debt to Stark, but he’d been working on it since then.

Bucky’s voice dragged Steve back to the present from the memories.

“Then you better help me out in the kitchen. I need a helping hand or two.”

Steve stuck his tongue out. “Ask the Soldier, I’m sure he’d gladly lend you one.”

“You are the only one who is able to eat anything that is made with that arm, Steve,” Bucky reminded him.

“I know, I hope you’ll make the pie with it.”

“You are terrible.”

“That’s why you love me.”

“Guess I do.” Bucky kissed him again, for longer this time, and just for the knack of it, he made the black smokey arm appear and he run both his hands through Steve's hair. Steve shivered in a good way - he was probably the only one who found the demonic limb kinky instead of scary. It was tempting to simply drag Bucky into the bedroom... But then they'd have to explain themselves not only to Tony and Pepper but to Sam and Natasha, too. So that was out of the question right now.

Still, he plastered himself to Bucky's side and nibbled his earlobe.

Bucky lolled his head to the side and offered his throat. Steve licked it. “My sweet prince of hell,” he purred. “Maybe I don't want dinner after all.”

“You are terrible,” Bucky repeated, and freed himself from Steve's embrace. He kissed his cheek one last time, then spirited away his left arm and jogged back into the kitchen.

Steve smelled the air again. “Will it be your Ma's secret recipe?” he asked. Bucky stuck his head out the corner and wrinkled his forehead.

“I hope you didn't send a rat home to spy on Thanksgiving preparation!”

Steve clutched at his heart, feigning hurt. “That was _one time!”_ he complained.

Bucky stuck his tongue out. “That wasn't a no!” he pointed out, but none of them were serious. They both knew Steve would not do something like that again, at least not after they had that argument about boundaries and personal space and even more boundaries. “If I find you pull a stunt like that again you'll be kicked in your sorry ass, Rogers!” He disappeared, and Steve smiled fondly as he followed him.

"I love you too."

They were kind of granted to have a great holiday.


End file.
